The launch is not the end. It's the moment when everything you built meets real traffic, real devices, real browsers, and real user behaviour. The 30 days after launch are when problems surface and when the foundation for long-term performance is either established or neglected.
Here's what to expect and what to do about it.
Before you send a single traffic source to the site, verify:
DNS propagation. DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to fully propagate. Check from multiple locations (use dnschecker.org) to confirm the new site is serving universally, not just from your ISP's local cache.
HTTPS. Every page should redirect from HTTP to HTTPS. No exceptions, including subpages and the www/non-www version. Test by typing http://yoursite.com and confirming it redirects.
Redirects from old URLs. If you had a previous site, every URL from the old site should 301 redirect to the correct new URL. Broken redirects lose SEO equity and send users to 404 pages.
Contact forms. Test every form on the site, including the mobile version. Check that submissions arrive at the correct email address. Test the confirmation message or redirect after submission.
Analytics. Open your analytics platform and navigate around the site in a browser. Confirm page views are appearing in real time. If they're not, the tracking snippet is missing or broken.
Cookie consent. Navigate the site as a first-time visitor and confirm the cookie banner appears, that accepting/rejecting works, and that analytics respects the consent status.
Google Search Console is non-negotiable for any site you care about ranking.
Submit the sitemap. Go to Search Console > Sitemaps and submit your sitemap URL (usually /sitemap.xml). This tells Google where all your pages are.
Request indexing for key pages. Use the URL Inspection tool to request indexing for your homepage, about page, and any key service pages. Google will still find them via the sitemap, but direct requests can accelerate initial indexing by days.
Verify no crawl errors. Check the Coverage report for any crawl errors (404s, server errors, blocked pages). Address any errors immediately — crawl errors signal to Google that your site has quality problems.
Note the initial baseline. Search Console data takes about 48 hours to appear. Once it does, note your initial impressions and clicks. This is your pre-traffic-growth baseline.
Now that real traffic has started, measure your actual performance with real-user data.
PageSpeed Insights. Run your homepage, most important landing page, and blog index (if applicable) through PageSpeed Insights with mobile device selected. Note the LCP, INP, and CLS scores. If any metric is in the red (LCP > 4s, INP > 500ms, CLS > 0.25), fix it before scaling traffic.
Real device test. Open the site on a real mobile device — not browser DevTools. Navigate through five or six pages. Note anything that feels slow, anything that looks wrong, any tap targets that are too small.
Check your error monitoring. If you have Sentry or equivalent set up, review the first 48 hours of error logs. JavaScript errors that didn't appear in testing often appear with real browsers.
Confirm indexing. Search Google for site:yourdomain.com. In the first two weeks, Google may have indexed only your homepage. By the end of week two, key pages should appear. If they don't appear after three weeks, check your robots.txt and Search Console coverage report.
Check OG previews. Share your key pages on LinkedIn and Twitter. Confirm the preview image, title, and description appear correctly. If OG tags are missing or wrong, fix them — every social share from now on will use them.
Verify schema markup. Use Google's Rich Results Test on your key pages. Confirm that your JSON-LD schema validates without errors. Schema errors mean Google ignores your structured data.
Check hreflang tags if multilingual. If your site has multiple languages, verify that hreflang attributes correctly link the alternate versions of each page. Use hreflangvalidator.com or similar tools. Incorrect hreflang is a common source of indexing confusion for multilingual sites.
Review analytics by page. Which pages have high bounce rates? For a marketing site, anything above 70% is worth investigating. Which pages have low average session duration? These are candidates for content improvement.
Check form conversion data. How many people are filling out your contact form or starting a trial? What's the conversion rate from homepage visitor to form submission? This is your baseline for future optimisation.
First content update. If you have a blog or CMS, publish your first post in the first 30 days. Search Console and Google's index respond to active sites. A site that hasn't changed since launch looks less authoritative than one with recent activity.
Mobile traffic check. What percentage of your traffic is mobile? Most marketing sites see 50–65% mobile. If your mobile conversion rate is significantly lower than desktop, investigate the mobile UX.
Every project we deliver includes 30 days of post-launch support. This covers:
Bug fixes. Any behaviour that differs from the agreed scope — form not submitting, animation not triggering, content not displaying correctly — is fixed at no additional cost.
Analytics verification. We check that Google Analytics, Search Console, and any event tracking is firing correctly.
Performance follow-up. We run PageSpeed Insights one week after launch. If any metric has degraded from the pre-launch audit, we investigate and fix.
Content guidance. If your editorial team is using the CMS for the first time, we'll answer questions about the CMS workflow.
What the 30-day window doesn't cover: new features, new pages, design changes, or content writing. These are change orders or retainer work.
Week 1:
✓ DNS propagation confirmed
✓ HTTPS redirect verified on all URLs
✓ Old URL redirects tested
✓ Contact forms tested (desktop + mobile)
✓ Analytics tracking verified
✓ Cookie consent working
✓ Search Console: sitemap submitted
✓ Search Console: key pages indexed
✓ No crawl errors in coverage report
Week 2:
✓ PageSpeed Insights: all key pages green
✓ Real device test completed
✓ Error monitoring reviewed
✓ OG previews checked on social
✓ Schema markup validated
✓ hreflang verified (if multilingual)
Week 3–4:
✓ Analytics review: bounce rates by page
✓ Conversion rate baseline established
✓ First blog post published
✓ Mobile traffic share and conversion reviewed
✓ Search Console: impressions and clicks appearing
The launch is the beginning. The first 30 days tell you whether what you built is working and where the gaps are. Address them before scaling traffic — because scaling traffic to a broken site just scales the problem.
About to launch a new site and want a second pair of eyes on the technical setup? Start a conversation — we'll walk through your launch checklist and make sure nothing is missing.
We take on a small number of projects each quarter. Tell us what you're building.
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